October 10, 2022

Episode 3

ALEP Trip Report & Shire Quick Post

Hosts & Guests

Alicia

Alicia

(she/they) A queer Tolkien scholar and Zelda nerd interested in adaptation, audience reception, and biography.

Grace

Grace

(she/her) An acquirer of books, a queer-rights activist, serves as as the Subscriptions Steward of the Mythopoeic Society, and is a Professional Nerd (okay, technically it’s an unpaid internship).

Leah

Leah

(she/her) Just another weird Tolkien geek living in the Grey Havens (also known as Seattle WA) with two rabbits and far too few books.

Tim

Tim

(he/him) An experienced podcaster, Online Events Steward for the Mythopoeic Society, all-around nerd, and firmly believes that if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

About This Episode

Alicia & Tim share their experiences from their first time attending ‘A Long-Expected Party’ at the Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Kentucky with Grace and Leah, and recount how they were pleasantly surprised to find it to be quite a Queer event! Then we check our mailbox for the first edition of the ‘Shire Quick Post’, to discuss some recent happenings in the world of Tolkien – some troubling, others inspiring.

Transcript

Queer Lodgings: A Tolkien Podcast
Episode 3: ALEP Trip Report & Shire Quick Post

[ Intro music with birdsong plays ]

Grace: Hi everyone, welcome to “Queer Lodgings”, the queer-led podcast about everything Tolkien. I’m Grace, and I’m here with my co-hosts, Leah and Alicia.

Leah: Hey there!

 

Alicia: Hello!

 

Grace: Thank you for joining us. Go ahead, pull up a chair, settle in with a warm drink and get ready to open the Quick Post as we bring you some updates from the wider world of Tolkien. In this episode, we’ll interview Tim and Alicia about attending ALEP (A Long-Expected Party) and also debut our Quick Post segment, where we’ll bring you news about what’s going on in the world of Tolkien studies and Tolkien fandom from a progressive, queer-led lens.

 

[ Cat meows ]

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: Your cat is fucking killing me!

 

Leah: [ meows ]

 

Alicia: When you inevitably leave that in, please, like, turn up the volume on the cat meowing.

 

Leah: That’s just gonna be, like, the intro sound for the end of the introduction for all of these.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: Which works so well!

 

Leah: Like, we’re done! It’s like, pull up a chair and get ready for our episode! [ Meows ]

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: So, Tim and Alicia, first things first. What is ALEP?

 

Alicia: The way that I usually have been describing it to people who know that I am a huge Tolkien nerd is… I’m going to go to this farm in Kentucky and LARP a Hobbit for a weekend.

 

[ Group laughter ]

Tim: Yeah, that’s kind of it. ALEP stands for “A Long-Expected Party”. You know, Bilbo’s long expected birthday party. And it takes place at this Shaker village in the sort of mountains of Kentucky that just looks like the Shire basically, if—I mean, it has actually buildings, not Hobbit holes, but it’s just this idyllic setting. It’s a functional farm so there’s, like, goats, and sheep, and ducks, and turkeys, and all kinds of animals.

 

Alicia: And just verdant rolling hills.

 

Tim: Yeah, so—

 

Leah: Verdant, love that.

 

Tim: It started in 2008 and basically spun out of the organizers attending I believe a Tolkien conference that they were just really disappointed in the organization of. But they met a bunch of great people there and it sort of—one thing led to another. They knew of this really great setting in Kentucky where, like–What if we could have an event there? Would be perfect. It feels, you know, very much like a Tolkien-esque kind of setting. And then they’ve been having them every three years since then, so… It’s not like a, you know, annual con. It happens every three years in the Fall and then I think in between the last couple they’ve started doing these, like, halfway events. And so, a year and a half in between each in the Spring, in between two of them they have sort of a slightly smaller scale event that’s a little bit less kind of formal, I suppose. I don’t know. We haven’t been to one of those before.

 

This was our first one, and we had been told by a couple of our friends from Atlanta that have been coming to it for years that, you know, it’s a lot of fun, and just really kind of chill, and that they always have a great time. And so, we finally went to one. Actually, we were supposed to go in 2020 and then fucking 2020 happened.

 

Grace: Right.

 

Leah: Yeah, totally.

 

Tim: It just kept getting put off, and put off, and put off and then finally they had the event that was supposed to happen in 2020 this year instead.

 

Alicia: I do want to point out before we start talking about what happened there in-depth that most of the people who are ALEP regulars told us that this year in particular was kind of weird. It was kind of halfway between a halfway and a full one. Just because of the uncertainty of Covid times.

 

Grace: Okay, so like, I guess in terms of, like, attendees? Or like, how kind of, like—how everyone was wearing masks and stuff?

 

Alicia: It mostly seemed to be, like, the programming.

 

Grace: Okay, yeah, yeah.

Tim: Yeah, it sounded like there was usually more programming than they had this time.  They usually do have, like, sort of a scholar guest-of-honor kind of thing, like sort of similar to what MythCon does. But in this case, that scholar guest-of-honor was intended to be Michael Drout and he pulled out at the last minute for family reasons. For any of our listeners who hadn’t heard, he had a tragic loss in his family of his son–was it last year I believe? And they’re still kind of processing that, and they were about to get some information about that, about the passing of their son and he didn’t want to be away from his family at that time. So totally understandable, but it did mean that–

 

Leah: Totally.

 

Tim: — it sounded like it was somewhat different than they—they did end up bringing in a couple of people but seemed like it was a little more last minute. So, it sounded like there would have been a considerable amount more sort of academic-ish kind of programming than there actually ended up being in the long run, so… Some of the other programming was: they had, like, hikes where people just, like, dress up in their ranger or Hobbit costumes or whatever and walk on a hike. It’s literally, like I said, out in the mountains, like, beautiful area, middle of nowhere kind of thing. So, there are some really nice trails, and waterfalls, and rock formations and stuff. And a lot of it—it’s also really just a massive photoshoot too. So, like, you just go out and get all the pictures taken in your Tolkien cosplays kind of thing.

 

Leah: Aw, that sounds so much fun! I would love to go tramping around in the hillsides dressed as a hobbit! That would be amazing!

 

Alicia: Yeah, the rangers in particular are a big group of people who actually do go camping together and, like, do primitive camping?

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Tim: In their ranger costumes with packs and stuff that, like, they try and get everything to look, you know, not modern sort of things? So, like wooden carved bowls and cutlery and stuff, and everything. Like, lamps and stuff that all sort of looks primitive. Tents are just basically pieces of canvas that are, like, stretched across some wood stakes and that kind of thing.

 

Leah: Oh man.

 

Alicia: Yeah, they had a little ranger camp set up as an exhibit, so you could go by and talk to them about their backpacking experience.

 

Leah: Ah okay, very cool.

 

Grace: That’s amazing.

 

Leah: Yeah, that’s hardcore.

 

Tim: There’s archery competition–and some of these people are clearly pretty serious into their archery and stuff. Like, you know, brought their own bows, and arrows, and everything. And the most involved that I got with things was—one of our friends–if any of our listeners ever go to DragonCon and are familiar with the elf choir that sings at Evening at Bree, or does the—the elves at DragonCon at some point do, like, a walking into the west where they walk from the easternmost hotel at DragonCon to the westernmost hotel of DragonCon singing the music from “The Fellowship of the Ring”

 

Leah: Oh, very cool.

 

Tim: —where you see the elves passing into the west with lanterns and stuff like that. So,

Kathleen is the one that organizes that and she also, like, sort of heads up the choir for ALEP as well. And so, it was a lot of great stuff. Like, some of the stuff she writes herself. The way that ALEP was organized this year was it was Arda through the ages. So, it’s three full days. The first day was First Age, second day was Second Age, third day was Third Age. And for the Second Age day, she did a “Rings of Power” medley.

 

Leah: Oh!

 

Tim: Of like, the Valinor themes and then “Wandering Day” which was really nice to be able to sing in front of everybody, and she does the arrangements and stuff.

 

Leah: That’s so cool.

 

Alicia: I’m fucking sick of that song already.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: And then on the Third Age day we got to sing “Misty Mountains” from the “Hobbit” movies so that was fun too.

 

Leah: Very cool.

 

Alicia: I wasn’t nearly as involved in actual programming. I went to one talk where someone was passing around the exhibit booklet from “Art of the Manuscript” and that was really cool.

 

Leah: Oh cool! Cool!

 

Grace: Very nice.

 

Alicia: But other than that, I just like…hung out dressed as a Hobbit or a Ringwraith and read Return of the King.

 

Tim: Yeah, and then besides that it was really just kind of… hang around in cosplay or, in the case of our Ringwraith cosplays, skulk around in cosplay.

 

Alicia: It was so much fun!

 

Tim: Yeah, a lot of people don’t really seem to cosplay villains. It’s really more people, like, just trying to, you know, have a relaxing time.

 

Leah: Hang in the Shire.

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly. You know, a lot of people aren’t even cosplaying, like, specific characters or anything like that. They just want to be some generic background Hobbit or something like that. You know, that doesn’t have to fucking go on like a, you know, six-month trek to Mordor or some shit, right?

 

Leah: Lose their fingers, you know?

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly. I’ll just hang out in the Shire and, you know, have eighteen meals a day kind of thing.

 

Grace: Ahhh, it’s an energy that I very much enjoy.

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly. And so, we got to wear our Ringwraith cosplays for basically only the second time since Dragon Con 2019 and sort of sneak around the Shire and sneak up on people and have Hobbits–you know, take pictures with Hobbits that were—

 

Leah: Being menaced. Yeah. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: You know, recoiling in fear away from us. And then after dinner one night we hid. There’s a walkway that’s, like, totally pitch dark. We hid along that walkway and kind of, like, jumped out at people, scaring them on their way back in our Ringwraith cosplays.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: Nice.                 

 

Grace: So, costuming and Cosplay is a pretty big part of this, right?

 

Alicia: It was for us.

 

Tim: Yeah, and a lot of the cosplayers are, like, pretty serious. Like, so–there are some of these cosplayers that are, like, people that enter competitions regularly and stuff. And some of the work was just—and the thing is nobody–There’s no contest or anything. Like, nobody’s going there, you know, to… I guess to some extent to show off or whatever. But, like, really everybody’s just going there because they love to, you know, dress up in their costumes in this world kind of thing, which is really neat.

 

Alicia: Yeah, it was such a chill event. Like every night they have the basement of one of the buildings is, um…. looks kind of like a pub, so they set it up like a pub. They call it The Dancing Pony and everyone just kind of gathers there. I also can’t actually pronounce their name. The Brobnanigan Bards?

           

Tim: Brab-Dig-Nanian Bards. [ sp: Brobdingnagian Bards ]

 

Leah: Brab-Dig-Naygian, yeah.

 

Tim: Yeah, so Marc Gunn and I think the other guy’s name is Andrew McKee, they’re there the whole weekend. They bring them there for the whole weekend and they play during dinner, and then they come down into “the Pony” after dinner and we basically–it’s like a singing circle kind of thing. Like, everybody just sits around and, you know, they probably play for a good, like, five or six hours a day kind of thing.

 

Leah: that’s so cool!

 

Grace: Amazing!

 

Alicia: Yeah, if you don’t want to sit around and sing, because that’s not my speed, there is also just, you know, a bunch of tables that you can sit around with people. And then there are a ton of fire pits. So, a fire pit happens basically every night. One of the nights we were there someone brought their, like, crazy telescope and this isn’t, like, super Middle-earth related. But, you know, we just got some telescope time.

 

Tim: It was an Elf telescope.

 

[ Group chuckles ]

 

Alicia: Yeah, Elf magic.

 

Tim: Yeah, and because there’s–it’s out in the middle of nowhere and there’s, like, no light pollution, you can see all kinds of really cool stuff in the sky.

 

Leah: Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah.

                       

Tim: We sat a lot around a fire pit one night and just got hammered and played Cards Against Arda on our phones and so… It was fun.

 

Alicia: A lot of random, like, Norwegian metal got played around a campfire.

 

Tim: Yeah. [ laughs ]

 

Leah: As you do?? You know??

 

Alicia: I don’t know why there’s so much overlap between Norwegian metal fans and Middle-earth fans but there is. It’s huge.

 

Leah: The whole, like, northern Finnish and like, yeah, Norwegian and Swedish, like—how there’s so much metal crossover between that sphere and the Tolkien sphere and I’m like, I don’t understand it to be honest. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: I guess it’s just the Norse mythology influences or whatever right?

 

Leah: I guess so. And Viking Rampage and, you know, Songs to Slay To, I don’t know….

 

[ Group chuckling ]

 

Grace: So, I don’t even know if I had other questions in here. My cat helpfully rewrote our episode guide.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Oh good!

 

Tim: What questions did the kitty have to ask?

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Alicia: Was it just a bunch of brackets?

 

Grace: Oh yeah. I certainly can’t read what questions Shouty wanted to ask of you, so I apologize to her for failing in this task. But no, one of the questions that I wanted to ask was…this is the first time you attended, correct?

 

Tim: Yes, yeah.

 

Alicia: Yes.                                          

 

Grace: So, as first-time attendees, what was something that intrigued or surprised you a lot about the event?

                                               

Tim: I guess for me it was that it was actually a way queerer event than I expected it to be. There was definitely sort of a generational divide. I would say the vast majority of the people that were there were—there was maybe a couple people that were, like, under 30 but I would say maybe 95 % of the people were 30 and above, and maybe 50% of the people were, like, 50 or above. Does that seem accurate Alicia?

                                                                       

Alicia: Yeah, it’s a pretty similar demographic split to MythCon, which is not helpful to anyone who’s not on this call right now. I would say that is pretty likely, although, like, my view of people under 30 is a little skewed because I talked to one of those people at length while we were there.

           

Tim: Yes, yeah. But yeah, especially in that younger contingent–and I say younger, in this context I mean like, you know, the 25-to-50 kind of crowd.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Tim: It seemed, like, very heavily skewed towards queer people. Like, a lot of non-binary people, trans people, gay in general people. I know at least there were a couple that were like aro-ace, that kind of thing too. And it was a really cool experience and not something that I was expecting because, especially at sort of the tables that we were hanging out, like, sort of late into the evening at the Pony or, like, around the campfires and stuff, I was in the minority as a fucking, like, cis straight dude and that was really interesting to me, you know?

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: And I found it–I mean, I was definitely having to be very conscious of pronoun usage and stuff like that, which I’m just—In my daily life, I don’t interact with that many queer people. Especially, like, not people that are, like, openly non-binary or trans. And so, it was really an interesting experience for me in that respect, just having to be that conscious of it and having those experiences. And I don’t know what it is about the event necessarily that, you know—it does seem like a very welcoming group of people in general. Like, they talk about–you know, it feels a little cultish, to be honest.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: Like, they talk about like, you know, once you’ve come once you’re part of “the family” sort of thing.

 

Alicia: The family.

 

Grace: Well, I mean that’s actually a very queer thing, so…

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly. I was kind of waiting for the Kool-Aid to get passed around.

 

Leah: So, is–wait, is being queer a cult now?

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: [ Facetiously ] Okay, I might have to re–might have to rethink some of this.

 

Alicia: It was really a great experience, speaking as a non-binary person, to be around that number of people who also are non-binary or genderqueer in some way.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Tim and I had a ton of conversations about “what pronouns does this person use?” And I’m like, shit I don’t know, just use they. It’s the safest, just use they.

 

[ Group chuckling ]

 

Alicia: I had a lengthy conversation with some–with a couple of people about hormone replacement therapy which is not at all what I thought I was going to be discussing at a Tolkien event.

 

Leah: Totally.

 

Alicia: It was fantastic. Like, to just really feel, like… fellowship with a bunch of people who are similar to me. Even though–I mean, I know a lot of those people from other events but to have everyone all together and just being our weird little queer selves, it was great.

                                   

Leah: Aw, I love that. Yeah, it’s kind of a rare thing in Tolkien to encounter. Especially, like, in in-person events. And I sort of hope that this means that this is going to become a lot less rare? Especially as those “younger folks”, the 20- to 50-year-olds, start ageing up and kind of, you know, becoming the… I don’t know, the old guard of Tolkien, you know? I kind of hope that the demographics are changing in all sorts of areas of society, and I’m eager for it, for what’s going on in Tolkien for sure.

 

Alicia: Yeah, it was interesting to me. I had thought about potentially doing, like, a demographic survey of different Tolkien groups because I’ve noticed as I’ve gone to more and more events…. there are older queer people at Tolkien events, and they’re generally lesbians.

 

Tim: Mhm.

                                               

Leah: I’m not quite sure what it is, but I’m like, I’m here for it. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: I mean, what are Hobbits if not cottagecore lesbians, honestly?

 

Alicia: Right.

                                   

Leah: That’s it, that’s exactly…

 

Tim: Speaking of demographics as well. Another thing that struck me is–it is a very white event.

 

Alicia: Oh yeah.

 

Tim: Which is probably not surprising to anybody.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: There–you know, I could—there’s probably less than 5%, people of color kind of thing.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: One of the gentlemen that was part of, like, the ranger group was Black–lovely guy. There was a woman, I think, maybe of Filipino dissent, but it was very, very white. But again, you know, I think that’s, honestly, you know, the demographic of Tolkien fans definitely does skew pretty white.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: But still, it would have been nice to see a little bit more representation in that respect. But, you know, take what you can get. Queer as hell is still pretty good.

 

Alicia: I saw like three Asian people there.

 

Tim: True, yeah, there were a few.

 

Alicia:  Which is the highest number of Asian people I’ve ever seen at a Tolkien event, ever.

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ] Yeah.

 

Alicia: Which is very sad.

 

Leah: That’s pretty funny.

 

Alicia: But also, a little heartening, right?

 

Grace: It’s a reminder to all of us that we have a lot of work to do to make our spaces actively welcoming instead of just passively welcoming if trying to hold space for everyone in Tolkien fandom and in Middle-earth.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: And I will say that the experience of ALEP –like, the experience of the event itself was very good in general and there’s not much that I can say that’s negative about it. It does kind of feel a little bit like it’s organized on a wing and a prayer.

 

Alicia: [ Sighs ] Yeah.

 

Grace: [ Laughing ]

 

Tim: You know, they give you a schedule, like, very last minute and you just kind of have to know or ask somebody else, like, where things are. It’s like, “Oh, where’s dinner tonight?” Because there’s one night that they have it under—Basically, they set up this area on sort of a satellite area of the Shaker village to be a Party Tree, and it’s beautiful. But like, if I didn’t know that it was out there, I would have just gone to the barn where we’d eaten dinner the past two nights, which is also lovely but not where dinner would have been that night.

 

Alicia: Yeah, the dinner was two miles away from the barn.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: Yeah, basically, somewhere that you have to drive to.

 

Alicia: Yeah.

 

Leah: You have to work for your dinner, man.

 

Tim: [ Laughs ] Yeah, exactly.

 

Alicia: Yeah. In terms of the programming too, because I feel like partially because Mike Drout dropped out and partially because I just get the feeling, like Tim, that it is just kind of on a wing and a prayer, most of the programming was incredibly heavily Christian.

 

Tim: The academic programming especially, yeah. They had a couple of guys there–I’ll just say names, I think it was Charlie Starr who is a professor. I can’t remember at what school. I’m vaguely familiar with his work. I think he’s more of a Lewis scholar, honestly, than he is a Tolkien scholar.

 

Alicia: Yeah.

                                                           

Tim: Not super surprising. And then another guy named Devin Brown who I had not ever heard of before personally. And they were the ones that were giving the…I think all of basically the academic programming.

 

Alicia: I’m famously sick to fucking death of “all Jesus all the time” in terms of Tolkien.

 

Leah: Ugh. [ Heavy sigh ]

 

Alicia: I mean—

 

Leah: I’m sighing, I’m right there with you, so. [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: It made me want to volunteer, the next time I go, to have some, like, not overtly Christian scholarship happening.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: But, like, some of the other stuff was cool. They had a bunch of costuming stuff like uh…

 

Tim: Historical costuming in particular, yeah.

 

Leah: Oh, that’s very cool, yeah.

 

Alicia: Yeah, as someone who spent a year and a half hand-sewing historically accurate Hobbit costumes, I appreciated that they were leaning into kind of more historical costuming. And it’s one of the things that I honestly miss about DragonCon. DragonCon used to have, in the Tolkien track, a bunch of costuming content which got me into wanting to do cosplay. And I wish that they would bring that back, but this isn’t an episode about DragonCon and its failings.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: I’m sure we’ll have that episode at some point as well.

 

Leah: Another episode, perhaps.

 

Tim: Yeah. But–and then the other thing, you know, that was a little bit negative surrounding ALEP was, again, because it is an event that’s happening during the pandemic, you know, they had to make choices in terms of, like, what COVID mitigation measures they were going to take and stuff. I guess last year they had sort of a very small, scaled-back event where they did require vaccination or proof of a negative test. They didn’t have that this year but they did end up requiring masks, and the Facebook group got spicy when they said that they were going to require masks.

 

Leah: Oh…

 

Tim: There was a lot of people that were great and said, like, yeah that’s fine. You know, I’m not crazy about it, but I’ll do it. But then there were some people that straight up said, like, I’m not coming if I have to wear a mask and whiny fucking…yeah, conservative anti-science bullshit     , and that wasn’t great.

 

Alicia: Yeah, keep in mind this is happening in Kentucky and therefore it draws a lot of locals and I feel like I am safe to make generalizations about people who live in Kentucky because I am from Georgia.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: I’m not sure if it was even all conservatives. It felt like there was a little bit of that horseshoe effect, like, far-lefty, like, Crunchy Hippie, like, I don’t trust anything that’s not “all natural” kind of thing.

 

Leah: Mm, yeah.

 

Tim: And there was actually one dude that I know is a practising witch. So, I don’t know political leanings but I think because of that was very much into the organic, like, you know, I don’t want to take anything into my body that’s not ‘all natural’ kind of thing, So.

 

Leah: [ Sarcastic laugh that morphs into an emotively ‘unhappy with this discourse’ whine ] Yeah.

 

Tim: None of that really surfaced at the at the actual event. I will say, you know, there were a lot of people that were not wearing masks even though they were required, but nobody really, like, made a stink about it. There’s just, you know, “you do you, I do me” kind of thing.

 

Alicia: Yeah. I spent a lot of time at fire pits because of that.

 

Tim: Yeah, outside.

 

Leah: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Tim: But the group that we were kind of conversing with was pretty good about it.

 

Alicia: Yeah, one of the people in the group lives with somebody who’s really high-risk, so we were all being as serious about that as we could be even when we were just hanging out inside by ourselves. One of the nights we, um, ended up in a house because that–the housing works in, like, individual houses and they’re split into little hotel rooms.

 

Leah: Oh, okay.

 

Alicia: So, our house was rented out completely with people that we knew, mostly people that we lived near in Atlanta. And one night we spent a couple of hours in, like, the downstairs of our house and we were all still—

 

Tim: A little common area.

 

Alicia: Yeah, we were all still wearing masks because one of those people is someone who lives with somebody who’s really highly at risk, even though we were all a group of relatively careful vaccinated people. It got brought up–You don’t know what “I’ve been careful” really means.

 

Leah: Right. Everyone’s level of care is different for sure.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Alicia: And that was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to go back at some point, whether we do the halfway one or the next full one. It was so just, like, chill and liberating and, like—I got up every morning and ate breakfast and then came back and had a nap, and then woke up and put on some cosplay and just, like, walked around and read a book, and then took our dog out, because we had taken our dog with us, in my cosplay. [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: Yeah!

 

Alicia:  And then it was time for dinner! It was great!

 

Leah: That sounds idyllic!

 

Tim: Gordon was Huan the hound of Valinor for the weekend.

 

Leah: Yes, there you go!

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: In his little goggles.

 

Leah: Awww.

 

Tim: Yeah, I will say the food as well was very Hobbitish. Like, it was, you know, full sort of Southern breakfast and grits and everything.

 

Alicia: Fucking biscuits and gravy, man I’ve missed that.

 

Tim: Baked apples with breakfast every morning and, yeah, it was really good.

 

Leah: Oh yeah.

 

Grace: Well, I’m glad to know that events like this exist, and to have it on my radar, and to have it on our listeners radar too because I think some of the way that we manifest the hope for continued inclusion and increased inclusion in Tolkien spaces is by being able to share the successes and challenges and all that of the events that of we’re attending so… this is fantastic.

 

Leah: Yeah, absolutely.

 

Grace: So, for the next section of our episode, we’re going to jump into our first Quick Post segment. So, Quick Post, as you may remember, is the name of the postal service operating in the Shire. Every few episodes or so, kind of on an irregular basis but just as needed, we’ll do a Quick Post segment to give you updates about the world of Tolkien and Tolkien in the world. And so, we’re going to start off with kind of a hard right turn here–

 

Leah: [ Editor’s Note: Says something unintelligible that may have been a punchline to the joke “right turn”.] [ Makes a drums and cymbals sound signifying a joke ]

 

Alicia: Oh no. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: [ Laughs ] Just a bit of a bummer.

 

Alicia: You’re going to go to hell for that one.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: Just because there is some really, you know, fucking terrible news in the realm of world politics and association with Tolkien right now. And that can be most succinctly summed up in two words, which is one person’s name and that’s, uh, Georgia Meloni.

 

[ Group sighs ]

 

Leah: [ Unenthusiastically ] Weeee….

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Tim: Exasperated sighs.

 

Grace: Everyone sighs. [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: It’s great that it’s been nearly a hundred years and Italy’s still showing its entire ass.

 

Leah: [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: So, for anyone who isn’t familiar with Meloni: Meloni is the newly elected prime minister of Italy. She is the head of a Neo-Fascist party that came out of the roots of the Fascist party there in Italy. She is the most right-wing person to hold this role since Benito Mussolini.

 

Tim: And I think she would see that as a badge of honor, sadly.

 

Leah: Yeah…

 

Grace: I believe she does, as does most of her family to my understanding, because they are also involved in the party.

 

Alicia: [ Sarcastically ] Shocking.

 

Grace: The reason that this relates to Tolkien is that she is a huge Tolkien fan.

 

Alicia: As are most fascists in Italy.

 

Grace: This is true.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: And this is actually something that I think a lot of folks in the wider just general Tolkien fandom don’t realize: That this is—there’s an organized fascist—neo-fascist movement that is taking place in, you know, various countries but in particular Italy [that] has, since 1977, been running neo-fascist “Hobbit camps” called “Campo Hobbit”. And this is going to sound great in this context–children’s youth fascist training camps, because those words always worked out well in history.

 

Leah: Yikes on several trikes.

 

Alicia: I do want to–

 

Tim: Yes, it is basically indoctrination into far-right and fascist ideals. It is extreme right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti, you know, socialism.

 

Grace: Deeply anti-LGBTQ.

 

Alicia: Yeah. I want to point out: This is not something that is new or just in the news. There have been entire academic papers written about this particular subject—

 

Grace: Exactly.

 

Alicia: —because it is so important and terrifying.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Tim: It’s just so hard to see what they could possibly see and identify with in Tolkien’s works. But when you read into it, it’s things like, you know, having different peoples that have their own spaces and countries that are their own, and that they don’t interact with each other kind of thing.

 

Leah: They don’t intermarry with each other.

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly. Except, you know—

 

Alicia: Except when they do.

 

Tim: —when they do in order to save the entire fucking world. They have to work together to do so. And then, you know, it’s a lot of, like, anti-globalization and anti-technology sentiments and stuff like that. It’s like “oh, well, Mordor and the Ring is, you know, represents all of modern technology and we should askew that for simpler times” and…

 

Alicia: As much as I hate this, people say it: “Tolkien’s rolling over in his fucking grave”. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Leah: He, as you say, he definitely is not, I think, with all the other shit that people tell us that he’s definitely rolling over his grave about. He definitely is for this. He absolutely is for this.

 

Alicia: Because he, one, hated fascists as evidenced by our twenty-minute rant about him and Nazis in our unofficial first episode. And two, the suggestion that perhaps the Ring might be allegorical. [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: Yeah. That would–that would really piss him off. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim:  Let’s just organize a letter-writing campaign to Georgia Meloni and her government of that letter [EN: Letters 29 & 30] where Tolkien talks about, like, how much he fucking hates Nazis.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: Like hey! This–He would not like you.

 

Grace: Just block-quote, block-quote.

 

Leah: Block-quote forever and ever, oh man.

 

Grace: But no, for more than half a century in Italy, the Fascist parties there have constructed their identity around this traditionalist mythic age, and symbols, and heroes, and creation myths and all of that. And I want to point out that what they’re doing in that is that they’re appropriating fiction and twisting it to create a fictitious past. This modern construction of a regressive past that was more regressive than history even ever was, and it’s an entirely modern construction.

 

Leah: Yeah, it’s a past that never existed at all.

 

Tim:  Yeah, it’s “the South will rise again” fucking Americans. It’s, you know, the misogynists that, you know, that want to go back to Pleasantville fucking 1950’s America that never really existed, or only really existed for upper white class men basically and nobody else in America, right?

 

Grace: Yeah, it’s “Make America Great Again”. It is the Italian, like, fantasy-based fascist movement–and, in fact, uh, link up there because Steve Bannon, in fact, has spoken and been a guest of honor at one of the, like, training camps that Meloni herself hosts and organizes.

 

Alicia: I really thought he was dead.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Grace: Yeah, no…we’re still yikes on trikes here.

 

Leah: From your lips to Satan’s ears.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: Because I hadn’t heard about him in a while, and the last time I saw a picture of him he looked real—he looked Mitch McConnell bad, right?

 

Grace: He’s always looked that terrible. I think, like, from the day he was born he looked like that.

 

Tim: The man looks like he’s actively rotting.

 

Alicia: Well, evil will age a white person like milk.

 

Leah: Yeah, he’s like Emperor Palpatine. Like where, you know, the more evil he gets the more horrifically he distorts.

 

[ Group chuckling ]

 

Grace: One of the things that I did want to point out: The New York Times did sort of a profile on this phenomenon and they point out that after the Second World War, younger members of the fascist movement were starting to feel excluded from civil society, and so they seized on a particular edition of Lord of the Ringsin Italian prefaced by Elémire Zolla, a philosopher who was “a point of reference on the hard right and who argued that Tolkien was “talking about everything we confront every day”.”

 

Leah: Hm.

 

Grace: So, these are some of the talking points that are being used in this context. And Meloni, actually, in an interview said that Tolkien explains better than we can what conservatives believe in.  Which is one thing that just pisses me off.

 

Leah: Yeah. It’s kind of chilling.

 

Alicia: Conservatives famously are all about interracial friendships, uh, banding together to save the world!

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: Sailing off into the West with your, you know, bro.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Tim: Right.

 

Alicia: Being aristocratic and befriending people of a lower socioeconomic status than you.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Leah: Yeah, it’s kind of chilling, I think. Another line from that–the very end of that article from The New York Times really, really kind of disturbs me on a deep level. It’s a quote from her in the article. She says: “I consider power very dangerous. I consider it an enemy and not a friend,” and based on what she has been doing for most of her life and now being poised to take on this position of power in Italy, I kind of have to wonder if she actually believes that. If she actually believes in what she’s saying there because her actions suggest… suggest otherwise.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Right.

 

Tim: And I will say that I think that this is maybe one of the sort of side effects, whether good or bad, of “Rings of Power” and all of the backlash that we’ve seen. I don’t know that all these think-pieces would be getting written if Tolkien wasn’t sort of at the forefront of the public conscious right now. And so regardless of how you feel about “Rings of Power”, I think that it’s, you know, just the fact that we’re having these conversations about Tolkien, that it’s dragging a lot of this terrible shit into the light, and shining a light, you know–When did you think you were going to see an article about, you know, fascist groups co-opting Tolkien in the fucking New York Times? Like, so—

 

Leah: Or Stephen Colbert!

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Grace: Stephen Colbert has an amazing segment on this, which we will try to provide a link to in the show notes there if we’re able. But–and I don’t want to spoil all of the punchlines because he does such great delivery on all this, and really takes it to task in a very humorous sort of way that juxtaposes the horror and the humor.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: So, I’m glad at least that some light is being shone on all of this in a more mainstream fashion. Like, a lot of people already knew that it was happening but, you know, that it is kind of being brought more into mainstream discourse.

 

Alicia: I do hope that that continues. This coverage of Meloni is some of the first coverage that hasn’t just been like, “Oh, angry fans” and has been like, “Oh wait, no, we’re actually tying it to a fascist movement”. I hope more of that starts happening. Because like, yeah, there are angry fans but there has been this organized group of fascists using Lord of the Rings and other cultural touchstones to further push their agenda and they have been for literal decades now.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: And people have just not been paying attention to it, or writing it off as, like, some low-stakes culture war when it’s more than that.

 

Tim: Mhm.

 

Grace: There’s a reason that a significant percentage of articles about Tolkien have been written in right-wing publications in the United States, like the National Review. There’s a distinct reason for that. It’s a longstanding, evolving phenomenon and the fact that we’ve–a lot of us have been lucky enough to escape recognizing it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been happening.

 

Two just really horrifying other details from this about Meloni and then we’ll move on to our next point. Just—there is a….group, a musical group, that is a, like, fascist folk band?

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: Fucking hell.

 

Leah: I think, that’s like–extremist folk band just…I can’t, I’m like, that’s– [ Chef’s kiss sound ] chef’s kiss.

 

Grace: The oxymorons!

 

Alicia: He’s going to play the fiddle real aggressively.

 

Leah: Really aggressively!

 

Grace: Like, I’m familiar with, like, Joni Mitchell being a Tolkien fan?

 

Leah: [ Laughing ]

 

Grace: And so, this is just hard to wrap my brain around. But the band, Fellowship of the Ring, plays songs about European identity including what became the anthem of Meloni’s party’s youth front: “Tomorrow Belongs to Us.”

 

Leah: Jesus.

 

Grace: Which is an echo of the ballad “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”, sung by a member of the Hitler Youth in a chilling scene in the movie “Cabaret”.

 

Alicia: Wow. That’s so on the nose!

 

Grace: It’s so on the nose. Also, they did acknowledge that in the context of Campo Hobbit…the camps have their fair share of Fascist salutes but they’re characterized as ironic.

 

Leah: [ Sarcastically ] Oh, right. Because that also definitely is not a part of the wider far-right movement spreading its tentacles across the internet. They definitely never use irony, or “it’s just a joke”, or humor, or any other kind of way of shit-posting to, you know…

 

[ Audible sigh ]

 

Tim: Yeah. Pepe the Frog, the Okay symbol, all of that. As soon as they get called out it’s like [ in Angry Nerd Voice ] “Well, it’s just sarcasm, it’s just irony”.

 

Leah: It’s just—yeah, I’m just doing it ironically, it’s just a joke, calm down.

 

Grace: Yeah. The sound that listeners may be able to hear in the background is the collective sound of all of our eyes just rolling back in our skulls as we read this. Yeah.

 

Alicia: I do just want to point out if there are any people who are currently listening to this podcast who identify with that fascist shit-posting nonsense: Fuck you in particular.

 

Leah: Yes. Stop listening.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: I don’t care why–I don’t know why you’re listening, but stop it.

 

Grace: I’m not sure how you got here, but I think you’re lost.

 

Tim: This is not the podcast you’re looking for, move along.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: Yes, move along.

 

Grace: The other thing is that–Meloni points out that she essentially elevates Tolkien’s text (or at least her interpretation of it) to the level of no longer being a secular text but being a religious text.

 

Alicia: Oh, please tell me she’s one of those fucking “Canonize Tolkien” chuckle fucks.

 

Grace: That would require even more research into Meloni than I have done and I—I—gross.

 

Tim: There’s only so many showers you can take.

 

Leah: I was going to say that might be a rabbit hole that I might not want to dive down into.

 

Alicia: Yeah. Like… these are the same people who are 100% “Oh, Tolkien would hate that”. I just want any of those people, if you didn’t fuck off when I just told you to, be well aware.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: Tolkien would roll over in his grave at least five times to hear anyone trying to elevate his work to the status of a religious text.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Primarily I’m basing that on his dislike of Lewis’ proselytization because he didn’t think that lay people should have any say in religion at all because he was incredibly Catholic. Yeah, get the fuck off with that!

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: He was very careful to remove overt religious reference from his text as often as he caught it. Certainly, he might have believed in themes and what-have-you but he was very, very, careful about this and very upfront about this in his letters. So…hoof, folks.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: I got way more heated about this than I was expecting.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: Hey man, if you’re not [ Referencing the film “Clue”:] “flame-flames on the side of your face” about fascists then I don’t know—I don’t know why you’re here. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: You’re not paying attention.

 

Leah: You’re not paying attention, that’s right.

 

Grace: So, shifting gears just over across the Atlantic, coming back over here to America again. A link-up with Mr. Bannon having an overlap with this. But this is a more hopeful news item, and that is that there’s a podcast that at least some of us among the hosts have been listening to and really enjoying. That’s the “American Id”podcast hosted by Dani Holtz and Craig Franson. They’ve started their debut series by looking at Tolkien and the “Rings of Power”, the backlash around it, and contextualizing that over a series of researched, nuanced, in-depth episodes where they explore the efforts of the American extremist right-wing to “purify” Middle-earth and to purify Tolkien for their ideological purposes. How that’s unfolded over the last six decades.

 

They have a lot of really interesting information in their shows and a lot of things that are just really interestingly contextualized that I think—one of the reasons that I in particular am enjoying it is that it helps me feel like I understand the full context and I’m not being gaslit by people who claim that this is a new phenomenon or it’s an isolated phenomenon.

 

Leah: Yeah, 10,000%. Like, this–I’ve been morbidly reading and researching a lot about conservatism and about the far-right and particularly the niche of, like, Christian nationalism, and Christian dominionism, and Christian fascism. And in the Venn diagram of a lot of these things, Tolkien comes up a disturbing amount. And, again, for the reasons that we’ve kind of been talking about. And Craig and Dani do a really great job of kind of outlining how this movement is an actual movement and not an isolated phenomenon that isn’t–it’s not a fan, like, sphere sort of… isolated bits of upset fans about things. It’s strategic. It’s organized to a far greater degree than you might think, and there are a lot of different actors and players in this, some of whom don’t even realize that they’re actually a part of this network of chaos and bigotry.

 

Grace: They go into how each of these things has built upon the previous piece historically.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: And I think that’s really key to the contextual understanding because I am in my thirties and this has been going on twice as long as I have been alive, and that matters to me to know the context of.

 

Leah: And it’s been going on since the internet debuted during our childhood. You know, I’m also not–I don’t know if I’m an elder millennial, but I’m in my thirties as well. And so, I’m kind of like…I can remember there not being an internet and then there being an internet. And so, it’s been a tool for this movement that has only contributed to…maybe more of its members have deteriorated, but their impact, I think, has magnified exponentially thanks to the internet. And so, yeah, it’s been a podcast that I’ve just been really, really, really enjoying. It just started and I feel like if you’re interested in this sort of information

then it’s a really worthwhile resource for you.

 

Grace: Yeah, one of the things that was just very salient to me was looking at the context of how so much of the conservative attempt to claim Tolkien has started in places like the National Review, and decades ago. But now with the backlash about, you know, “Rings of Power” and everything like that, I’ve noticed that a lot of the articles that continue getting shared in Tolkien spaces, in spaces about that show, are articles published through Forbes and this lends a veneer of respectability. But the people publishing and writing these articles are contributors to the National Review. There is a distinct lens that is going on and it’s not particularly hidden. It takes very little effort to scratch the surface and see it and to understand the political connections of why a, you know, a business magazine like Forbes, whose readership skews toward business executives who are–70% of them align with the conservative right. Why they’re publishing this sort of content and what tradition it comes out of. So, yeah.

 

Alicia: I haven’t actually been listening to this podcast but I’m just going to jump in to vouch for Craig and Dani as people and as scholars. I have been to numerous conferences at this point where Craig has been presenting his research and it’s all incredibly well-founded and it’s good shit. And I’m assuming if he takes half of what he’s putting into his scholarship into this podcast, it has also got to be incredible.

 

Leah: Yeah, I’ve been a fan of Craig since I think I saw him on probably one of those panels that you have mentioned before and so, yeah, I was super excited to learn that he and Dani were coming out with this podcast because I think it really is a chance for that research to reach an even wider audience than he’s been able to before.

 

Alicia: And it needs to. And I am so thankful that he is willing to take on the actual physical risk of releasing this research into the greater public.

 

Leah: Yeah. It’s really important stuff. It’s dark and it’s kind of terrifying. I’m one of those who’s like—I like to have knowledge as kind of an inoculation, I guess, against some of this really dark stuff. And so, the more I know, the more I feel like I’m able to point out when it appears in my sphere and, unfortunately, with the show it’s been appearing a lot more. [ Uncomfortable laugh ] So, we’ve been encountering numerous folks with numerous takes on Tolkien, many of which would probably be recognized and favored by Georgia Meloni. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: Yuck.

 

Alicia: Yeah.

 

Grace:  On that related note: News Item. There’s apparently a television show airing in the Tolkien space. You may have heard of it.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: What? What are you talking about, I’ve missed this entirely!

 

Grace: In an actual connection to our previous topic, the space of Tolkien scholarship and research: We wanted to highlight a particular review of a book that has come out in recent months on the topic. The title of the book is Tolkien, Race and Racism in Middle-earth by Robert Stuart and, um… here I will just distinctly note that what we’re centering is Dimitra Fimi’s review of that book which she did just release. It’s a beautiful eight-page review.

 

Alicia: Dimitra Fimi’s a fucking boss. 

 

Tim: Yes. In Journal of Tolkien Research.

 

Leah: Yes. And this review is, like, mwah [ Chefs kiss sound ] like, Chefs Kiss masterful annihilation. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: The knifework on this academic evisceration is particularly beautiful.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: She dissembles this book with surgical precision.

 

Alicia: Yeah, I just want to give some context for people who don’t have it. Dimitra Fimi in 2008 wrote a book called Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History. We’ve mentioned it before because it is, like, a foundational book in Tolkien studies. It was the first monograph written about Tolkien and racism and it started a swell of scholarship that has followed it. So, this book, Tolkien, Race and Racism in Middle-earth, claimed in its blurb, its promotional materials, that it was the first monograph about racism in Middle-earth which is just false. 100% false.

 

Tim: Because Fimi’s book was put out by the same fucking publisher!

 

Alicia: I still haven’t gotten over that. Palgrave, what are you doing?

 

Leah: Yeah, what the fuck are you doing over there?

 

Grace: Now, for anyone who does want to do a deep dive on their own into this particular book, you can buy it new or used for $121.39.

 

Leah: Jesus.

 

Alicia: Or you can get Dimitra Fimi’s book which is so much better and only, like, twenty bucks.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Leah: And actually support–instead of supporting a white man who has never published in Tolkien studies before—

 

Alicia: We’ll get back to that one.

 

Leah: Yeah, who thought that he needed to wade into the fray and put up a defence of Tolkien and his racism. You can actually support a very well-known and wonderful scholar, Dimitra Fimi.

 

Tim: Yeah, the book apparently should not have been called Tolkien, Race and Racism in Middle-earth, but more “Tolkien, man of his time, was definitely not racist in any way, shape or form”.

 

Alicia: Yeah.

 

Leah: That’s the, uh, the accurate title.

 

Tim: Yeah, that’s the real title. [ Chuckles ]

 

Alicia: So, like, I have a personal beef with scholars outside of Tolkien studies who dip into Tolkien studies to publish something having not engaged with the field at all. And it’s something that happens all the fucking time with Tolkien studies. We’re a very small,       very insular field. I have been chastised for saying that because there are a few hundred people who work in Tolkien studies. But that is tiny when you take into consideration the thousands of people who study Shakespeare, etc.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Alicia: A lot of us know each other. No one knows who the fuck this guy is because he’s never published on Tolkien at all. And as one of my friends said: The brass fucking balls this man has to dip his toe into Tolkien with a monograph having never published in any of the Tolkien journals, and it to be this monograph.

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ] Mhm.

 

Alicia: Wow.

 

Leah: The fucking caucacity. The confidence of a white man to – [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: A mediocre white man, yeah.

 

Grace: So brave.

 

Alicia: Full disclosure, I have not read the entirety of this book. I have skimmed a couple of chapters. I don’t really feel a need to read this book having read Dimitra Fimi’s, which—

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: –based on the chapters I’ve skimmed seems vastly superior. And also, after reading this fucking review Dimitra Fimi left of this book. [ Laughing ]

 

Tim: Yeah, if anybody had an inkling of an idea to pick up this book and add it to their library, I strongly recommend that you check out Professor Fimi’s–

 

Grace: Take that $120 and buy Dimitra Fimi’s book. Buy her Audible course that she has on Audible right now about J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

Alicia: Yeah.

 

Leah: Oh yeah, yeah!

 

Grace: And then, you know, pick up a couple copies for some of your friends who could use a good read also. Money much better spent.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Leah: Yep.

 

Alicia: However, download this review that she did. The Journal of Tolkien Research is an open-access journal. It is worth reading. The first couple of paragraphs of that review, like, made me need a cigarette and I don’t even smoke.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Alicia: It was some of the best academic evisceration I have ever read.

 

Grace: In the first paragraph she–I mean, she completely, so elegantly, refutes the idea that this is—that his work is the first in this field and just, like, she cites

 

Alicia: Can I read this quote?

 

Grace: Yeah, please do, please.

 

Alicia: Quote: “It reads more like an unrealized book proposal, and at the same time an attempt to flaunt all the serious critical reading which has happened in the background of this study, in order to establish the writer’s authority (this is the first time Stuart has published on Tolkien)”. [Fimi, 1]

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: Beautiful.

 

Leah: Yeah. And then she does, like, you know, the boss move of citing herself, like, at numerous times in the review. [ Laughing ]       

 

Grace: She cites herself in the first paragraph–or references her work in the first paragraph, and also that of Robin Anne Reid—

 

Alicia and Leah: Yes.

 

Grace: —who is another tremendous scholar in this particular field.

 

Alicia: If you need bibliographic research done Robin Reid’s the person to do it.

 

Grace: Oh gosh.

 

Leah: Yep.

 

Alicia: She’s done a ton of bibliographic research. She knows the field of Tolkien studies better than basically anyone other than David Bratman, who does the Tolkien Year Review in Scholarship.

 

Leah: Yeah, and she does it with him now!

 

Alicia: Yeah, like, just don’t fuck with these people.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: They know the field much better than Bobby Stu does.

 

Grace: They’re better than you.

 

Leah: [ Laughing ] They’re better than you!!

 

Tim: Robbie Stu.

 

[ Laughing ]

Grace: One of the things that I really love in her review here is that…I mean, she takes to task the entire premise of this writing as well. Like, he is asking questions like, “Was Tolkien a racist” and everything like that. And this is a beautiful quote that I want to share where she says: “Demonstrating that Tolkien wasn’t self-consciously racist, that he did not set up to deliberately write a racist mythology, that he wasn’t a Nazi sympathiser, nor did he directly and specifically endorse the ideology of other contemporary fascist groups, in Britain and beyond, is pretty easy. Anyone who can read his fiction and nonfiction can see that.” [Fimi, 2]

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: Shit…

 

Tim: Anybody literate can figure out what you’re trying to prove.

 

Leah: Oh my God.

 

Grace: [ Continuing the quote: ] “What is at stake, and is taken up as a challenge in much contemporary Tolkien scholarship, is more complex than this.”

 

Alicia: [ Sighs] This entire book is written by a white dude who doesn’t know shit about systemic racism is what I’m getting from this. Like, it is very possible (I know I’m speaking to the choir here) to be racist and not intend to be racist. Because we all, as white people, benefit from a system built upon degradation of people of color.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Fucking Christ, guys. And I understand this dude’s from Australia and is not going to have the same, like, background with racism as, like, an American would.

 

Tim: Or a European for that matter.

 

Leah: A very different sort of background though—

 

Alicia: Yes.

 

Leah: —that, uh, perhaps he should educate himself upon before endeavouring to, uh, talk about it in a book-length, screed I guess but—

 

Grace: And to have more connections into the area of scholarship where you are seeking to publish can only enrich your work and make it better.

 

Alicia: One single paper!

 

Grace: And it seems like that’s a step he didn’t do.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: I would take him writing one single paper for any of our peer-reviewed journals, we have a number of them.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Like, you have to cut your teeth and cutting your teeth is not writing a borderline researched monograph. Like, that’s not where you fucking start!

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: And it just kind of speaks to, you know, again–fucking Palgrave. Like, come on you guys. You give this to a white dude who has very little to kind of show for it. It’s sort of like, what on Earth kind of message are you trying to send? And what have you been doing lately for some–perhaps some other scholars of color, some queer scholars, for anybody else basically. And instead, you kind of opted for this really easy way to get money because “Rings of Power” is out and Tolkien is in the public sphere again.

 

Grace: But this is also just a complete failure of capitalism too! Because to claim that this is the first in this field when you also publish the actual first in this field? Sell them both!

 

Alicia: Like, their marketing department should all be fired.

 

Leah and Tim: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Like, hire me Palgrave!

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: I just— How do you forget that you published, like, (as much as I don’t like to use this word) the seminal book on this subject? How do you just forget that?

 

Leah:  It wasn’t all that long ago either, so—

 

Alicia: Right!

 

Leah: Maybe that whole department has, like, turned over since then. But nobody knows what the hell is going on.

 

Alicia: Just searching “Tolkien and racism” brings up Dimitra Fimi’s book! A fucking cursory Google search would have solved this problem.

 

Leah: Absolutely. Like, unforgivable. [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: You don’t even have to go to Google Scholar! You can just go to regular Google!

 

Leah: Just Google the book!

 

Alicia: Man….! Like, yeah.

 

Grace: And by setting it up and framing it all this way too, it doesn’t set up any further research for success. It doesn’t set up this particular scholar who wrote this book for good reception, because it’s just–every aspect of it is slapdash.

 

Alicia: I can’t even imagine this guy coming to an actual Tolkien conference at this point.

 

Tim: Showing his face…

 

Alicia: Because if he came, I would go to his talk and fucking heckle him. I would be that dickbag in the audience heckling the speaker because the caucacity. [ Laughs ] The caucacity of this book.

 

Leah: It’s like, yeah, you don’t…you don’t deserve—you have not earned our respect here, man.

 

Alicia: Absolutely not.

 

Leah: You don’t deserve it.

 

Tim: In conclusion, fuck you, Bobby Stu.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Go read Dimitra Fimi.

 

Alicia: Right? Like, just—

 

Grace: Which you should have done before you began this book.

 

Alicia: Like, okay, so to be 100% fair to this guy, he actually does cite Dimitra Fimi in his work. It just seems like you didn’t actually, I don’t know, absorb what it was she was talking about.

 

Leah: I don’t think he took quite the right lessons away from… [ Laughs ] He needs to reread it, I think.

 

Alicia: Also, why did he allow them to bill his book as “the first of this kind” if he had cited Dimitra Fimi’s book in his work?

 

Tim: When he cites a previous monograph.

 

Alicia: I have so many fucking questions about this and so much rage about all of it. However, Dimitra Fimi is delightful and please read her review of this horrible book.

 

Grace: Yes. Please download it, please read the review. It is a delight to read, and also read her book.

 

Alicia: And do her Audible course. Plugging that one again.

 

Grace: Yes. Speaking of books, the last topic that we wanted to just touch on in our Quick Post review here is the current “Art of the Manuscript” exhibition that Alicia mentioned that is currently going on at Marquette University. This should send us off on a little bit more of a cheerful note.

                                               

Leah: But we’ve been quite cheerful this entire time, what are you talking about?

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: I’m not sure Bobby Stu is if he hears it.

 

Leah: We’ve been…Well, I guess that we’ve been perhaps cheerful about different things, but….

 

[ Group chuckling ]

 

Grace: Yeah. It often surprises people to learn that there is a sizable trove of Tolkien manuscripts in the collections of Marquette University’s Raynor Memorial Library. That collection contains the original manuscripts and multiple working drafts for The Hobbit, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Lord of the Rings and the original copy of Mr. Bliss, among other papers, etc. The reason for that is that in 1956 Marquette University had hired a new Director of Libraries [William B. Ready]. They were constructing Memorial Library, which is the older of the two connected buildings. Marquette is a Catholic Jesuit university and Ready was tasked with expanding the collections. He had a particular interest in preserving the works and manuscripts of Catholic authors around the world. Tolkien qualified in his view. So, in 1956, the same year that he came on board, Marquette purchased the manuscripts for £1500. That is, accounting for all of the inflation and all of the translation between currencies, still less than $40,000 today.

 

Leah: What?

 

Grace: Yep, $39,000 today.

 

Leah: And this was—

 

Grace: 1956 was before everything had taken off. It was before, like, the paperback copies became so popular in the United States. It was before there were adaptations, so it was very early on in the process. By that year, 1956, papers started arriving and a lot of it was there by 1957–Although Christopher Tolkien, throughout his life as he was researching things and would find individual sheets that were supposed to be part of that collection, would continue sending them to Marquette. Most of the rest of Tolkien’s papers, and a lot of ephemera, are held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Some of those items are currently on loan to Marquette for the “Art of the Manuscript” exhibit, which is going on there at the Haggerty Museum of Art on the Marquette University campus. And, full disclosure, I have been. It is amazing, oh my gosh.

 

Leah: So jealous.

 

Grace: Especially if you’re a nerd. I’m not sure that my, like, twelve-year-old nephew would be excited on the same level but I was very excited. They offer three time slots every day for admission. It’s a $10 ticket for adults with, like, some discounts available for different things. The exhibit runs until the 23rd of December, so it’s still going for a couple of months here. And I would honestly go back again, and again, and again just to be able to look at all of the artwork. They have some of the pages of the Book of Mazarbul and different things that are annotated with his handwriting. Drafts where Strider is still named Trotter.

 

Leah: Oh my gosh…

 

Alicia: Ah yes, the hobbit that wore shoes.

 

Grace: Yeah. Very, very cool things there. Also, I have to give mad respect to Christopher Tolkien in reading his father’s written annotations on manuscript drafts and everything, because having seen them in person now… hoooh boy that’s hard to read. Hoooh boy!

 

Leah: Yeah, he’s a mess. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: Alicia and I got to go to the Bodleian “Maker of Middle-earth” exhibit at Oxford a few years ago and see a bunch of Tolkien’s stuff in person, including some of his handwriting and yes, it is practically illegible. Anybody that did, you know–because he hand-wrote everything. He didn’t type anything out. So, he handwrote everything and had somebody, you know, type it up for him and Gods bless the people that could actually read his handwriting and type it—type that up.

 

Leah: For real.

 

Grace: Oh yeah.

 

Alicia: Yeah. I have yet to actually talk to somebody who did “Maker of Middle-earth” and also “Art of the Manuscript” to kind of compare the two because I really want to know—I want to go to “Art of the Manuscript” partially because the exhibition catalogue is beautiful and I don’t want to get it unless I actually go to the exhibition, and partially because I’ve seen some of the stuff that’s come out of Marquette for reasons I can’t talk about. I’ve never actually been to Marquette but I’ve seen some interesting things and I would like to see how much of that kind of stuff is actually on exhibit.

 

Leah: Is in the exhibit, yeah.

 

Grace: There’s a couple of really cool pieces there. There are some things that have never been exhibited before. So, there are things that are unique to this exhibit. I think they’re going to be fairly small, nuanced differences, but there are some really neat things that are–or that are laid out together for the first time and all that. One of the things that’s really cool about it is that they have essentially, like, microfiche set up. And they have copies of the single volume Lord of the Rings that was the published version sitting next to it. And you can sit and scroll through some of the manuscript script drafts—

 

Alicia: Oh nice!

 

Grace: —and then compare to what the actual published manuscript is.

 

Leah: Oh, that’s very cool.

 

Grace: And they were very…I don’t know if they would let everybody do this–I went on a Sunday when it first opened and they definitely let me hang out an extra half an hour just, like, sitting there nerding out. I highly recommend, for comparing the drafts, the council of Elrond in Fellowship is a great chapter to look at because in some of the early manuscripts it’s—you get all of Elrond’s narration instead of the summarization that is in the actual published draft. It’s very cool.

 

Leah: [ Sounds of awe ]

 

Alicia: That chapter is already so fucking long, I can’t even imagine.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Yeah. It would be really cool, I was going to say, I mean just going off of, like, you know, how much of that is Gandalf narrating. It would be so cool to have Elrond narrating as well instead of just the summary, but…

 

Grace: Yeah!

 

Leah: I wasn’t the editor, so…

 

[ Chuckling ]

 

Grace: There is also a really cool digital system that they’ve been working on. They’ve licenced from the Tolkien Estate the word “anduin” and they have this digital resource that they’re setting up where they can take six different manuscript drafts and you can look into the different drafts. The handwritten, the typewritten manuscripts, the amended ones, the final published edition, and see how things shifted and changed from draft to draft. And having it digitized in that way makes it really cool, and a really cool way to get a sort of a bird’s eye view.

 

Alicia: They’ve been working on that a while too.

 

Grace: Yeah, and I don’t get the impression that it’s done, that they’re—they’re still, like, deep in it.

 

Alicia: Yeah, Erik Mueller-Harder has been working on that and he’s been gone to Wisconsin for just months at a time. He’s from Vermont, I do believe.

 

Grace: I mean, it’s a very cool project.

 

Leah: That’s extremely cool.

 

Grace: Yeah. So, that’s happy news in the Tolkien space. Yay!

 

Leah: Yeah. Go see “Art of a Manuscript” if you can. I so wish that I could but I’m stuck here in Seattle, so I will have to lust over the catalogue and save up.

 

Grace: It is a very nice catalogue too.

 

Alicia: Yeah. I do want to bring up, like, quickly while we’re talking about Marquette. Bill Fliss, the current guy who is over the Tolkien archive is doing the fandom oral history project. He’s taking, like, five-minute interviews from people where you basically just talk about, like, how you got exposed to Tolkien, what Tolkien means for you. He debuted it at MythCon, like, three or four years ago. I was one of the first people to do it.

 

Leah: Oh, that’s really cool. Nice!

 

Alicia: He’s really cool. He really sets you at ease, and if you want to hear part of my story, I’m in the first advertising video they did for getting more people to fill out the oral history. It’s really interesting. It’s going to actually go into the archive along with all of Tolkien’s work. I recommend that if you have, you know, five minutes to spare.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: Yeah, it is a very cool archive that’s doing a lot of good work. And then also has had a really important role in a lot of, like, Tolkien scholarship and, like, access for scholars and everything like that. Like, I know in particular the Atlas of Middle-earth Karen Wynn Fonstad spent a lot of time working in Wisconsin, in particular with Marquette University for the archives and then also UW Oshkosh’s cartography department. So, there’s a lot of…sort of like middle America university resources there in the Middle-earth Atlas and I think that’s really cool.

 

Leah: That’s very cool. I’ve done the… I’ve sat down for, you know, three minutes with Bill Fliss and I think I’m in the third Éored? I will post a link to that because I–my name and stuff isn’t public in there and it’s… yeah, it’s a lovely experience. Like Alicia said, Bill is just a lovely guy and makes you feel very much at ease, and it’s a really cool way to kind of be a part of history, you know? And literally just talking about your love of Tolkien, and what your history with Tolkien is. So, yeah, we’ll post some links to that, I think, to email and get that set up because I think he’s still… he’s definitely still looking for folks to fill out the rest of the Mark, I think.

 

Alicia: Yeah, I’m wanting to say… yeah, it was part of the “Art of the Manuscript” talk I went to, Bill Fliss sent somebody with a bunch of talking points. They’re about to finish out one of the Éoreds but they still have, like, fifteen more to go or something like that. There’s definitely room.

 

Leah: There’s definitely room. So yeah, so, come and join, and tell your story.

 

Grace: And if you want to be able to catch those links and everything, come find us on social media and connect to us. Like the podcast, share the podcast. Alicia where can the folks find us?

 

Alicia: Yeah, so, you can find us on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or Spotify. You can also stream our episodes directly on Zencastr, which is https://zencastr.com/Queer-Lodgings-A-Tolkien-Podcast with hyphens between all those. Like Grace said, leave us a rating, please like, share, and subscribe. You can find us on Facebook at QueerLodgings. Twitter @queer_lodgings, and you can also send us an email at [email protected]. I can take a breath now.

 

Grace: Excellent.

 

Leah: Cool!

 

[ Group chuckling ]

 

Grace: Good job folks, our light, just like, news and reports episode that was going to be a bit of a short episode, I think we’ve come in under 2 hours.

 

[ Laughing ]

 

Leah:  Fab.

 

Alicia: Jesus Christ. We can’t record for less than an hour apparently.

 

Grace: We’re very bad at this, yeah.

 

Alicia: Yeah.   

 

Grace: Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time!

 

Leah: Bye guys!

 

Alicia: Bye!

 

[ Outro bird song music plays ]

Transcription by: Mercury Natis

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